When you think I've loved you all I can

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

31/01/99 : There It Is - 911

Oh great - another boy band.  And whilst Backstreet Boys, Robbie and even Boyzone have provided surprisingly bearable efforts, I'm expecting this to be properly shit.   And no, we've never owned it (21/48).

Well - I certainly wasn't expecting it to open with a very 70s cover of Bee Gee's "More Than A Woman".  Followed by the same idea with Tavares' "Don't Take Away The Music - they've not murdered it, but it's very inessential.  Ah, hold on - next up is Dr Hook's "A Little Bit More" (originally recorded by Bobby Gosh, Wikipedia tells me).  Is this all completely pointless 70s covers?

Why no!  Next up is "Never Gonna Give You Up" - a pointless 80s cover (and this one really is very pointless).  But, yes - the whole album is covers, mostly 70s R&B/disco.  They don't really ruin any of them, but they certainly don't add anything either - what on earth possessed them to record this?  If I'd realised what was going on earlier, they wouldn't have gotten a write-up but when I checked what I'd get instead of this, it was an Another Level album and I actually suspect this is probably more bearable, so I stuck with it.  Like Cher, this is a rubbish album without featuring any rubbish tracks (although they do a reasonable job of ruining of the title track when compared with Shalamar's original) but the overriding thought it brings to mind is "For the love of God - WHY?!?".

We're at #8 with a new entry this week at the start of a four week run which featured impressive drops each week - which suggests I wasn't the only person to wonder what the point to this was.  The top five this week were Fatboy Slim, Robbie Williams, The Corrs, Steps and The Corrs and the next highest new entry was Cassius (#29 - who?).

Wikipedia has very little on the album - it's their third and "A Little Bit More" was their only UK #1 single.  It doesn't have a section on the critical reviews (which is probably best, but it might have been amusing) and the only place it sold anything other than here appears to be Malaysia - which is somewhat curious to say the least.  Bizarrely, Wikipedia tells me that every 911 single got to #1 in Malaysia - when the band first visited the country they had no idea how popular they were and needed an army escort to get off the plane.

"Customers also listened to" Human Nature, One True Voice, D-Side and OTT - thankfully I know nothing about any of them.  And I thought I knew that 911 were an annoying boy-band, but it turns out I was well wide of the mark and they're a bang average covers band that wouldn't sound out of place at the local boozer.  All very odd - and they can consider themselves very lucky to get a write-up.

24//01/99 - Surprisingly average
07/02/99 - An astonishingly successful album

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